


Play It Again

by Astarloa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Community: hoodie_time, Depression, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Panic Attack, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astarloa/pseuds/Astarloa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean knows the definition of déjà vu by heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play It Again

**Author's Note:**

> Written for for the Dean-focused Hurt/Comfort challenge #6 at Hoodie_time. Disclaimer: The world of Supernatural and its characters aren't mine.

The door will slam shut with a bang.

Just like that.

Dean will be stranded on one side of a motel door in Flagstaff while his father is lost to the rain-soaked carpark that lies on the other. Cold anger and blame will linger in the silence. His back will slide down the wall until he’s left crouched, knees pressed tight to his chest. He won’t cry. 

Hours later he’ll still be there.

”I asked one thing of you, Dean. Look after your brother until I get back. What part of that didn’t you understand? _Christ_. You’re going to stay here while I find Sam. You hear me? Right here. We’ve already lost your mother and now you’ve…”

Remembered words will shift restlessly between glass lying broken and crushed, ground into stained carpet by steel-capped boots on the verge of falling apart. He’ll know how they feel. Fluorescent light will flicker, flicker, flicker and whine his name one distorted letter at a time. 

When he picks up a piece of glass and drags it across the inside of his arm, makes a wish, he’ll think that it’s pretty. Blood and glitter. 

He’ll be alone.

That’s how the first time will begin, just like that.

Cracks were always waiting in the corner of a life covered in ash, continuing to dream of flames in full flight. The door will set them free to splinter apart what he has, all that’s left: himself. 

The second time will mirror the pain of first and the third after that. 

Some of the details will change but nothing that matters. 

Uncanny reflections will hold him close in a succession of bathrooms that need cleaning; metal fingertips drawing straight, precise lines on his skin, making him bleed. He’ll pretend that he likes it that way. One day the labyrinth of want will transition to need, the red thread that he’s followed through the dark coming undone with a snap. He’ll be abandoned, unable to find his way back. 

A part of him won’t want to.

_Need, want, fuck, just fuck it, now-now-now-now, no, not now, can’t now, later, later, not now, later, ants crawling, breathe, not now, concentrate, twitching, fucking hate this, don’t leave, hate, now-now-now-now-now, now, yes, now, now, hate, want, love, need, now._

Just like that. 

Déjà vu will be an uninvited guest looking for somewhere to call home and rest for a while, weary of being mistaken for half-remembered thoughts, reduced to tales inexpertly woven over cups of stale coffee. One night it’ll be wandering past a cheap motel, peeping through curtains for want of something better to do. It’ll take a liking to a kid in room thirty-seven by the name of Dean Winchester, settle down and just…never leave. 

Then again, Dean won’t ask it to. 

Why would he?

Déjà vu will be the only one who seems willing to stay.

:::: :::: ::::

“I already _said_ I was sorry,” Sam says, guilt fighting losing battle with annoyance.

They’re sitting at a scratched formica table eating no-name cereal drowned with milk on the wrong side of sour. Dean throws his brother a hard stare before returning his attention to the soggy mess of his breakfast. 

One edge of the white china bowl is chipped.

He watches flakes swirl and disintegrate under his spoon, forces himself to chew and swallow another mouthful. It tastes wrong, tastes of nothing at all. Fingers rub uselessly at the twisted knot of his stomach, sickness pulsing in time to the ache of his arm.

Sam huffs and rolls his eyes.

“Fine, I don’t want to talk to you either. You’re just jealous ‘cause I got away from this stupid place while you were stuck with Dad eating stupid cereal.” 

He can’t listen to this.

The chair squeals in protest as Dean pushes it back and stalks to the sink, all but slamming his bowl down. Milk sprays over the counter. 

“Shit,” he curses softly, and swipes at the mess with a mildewed sponge that used to be pink. 

He thinks there’s a clean one in the cupboard somewhere, remembers buying a pack of three when they were on sale, but finding it seems too much effort.

Instead he watches drops fall from the leaking tap.

_Plink._

The washer needs changing.

He counts watery clouds form and die amongst dregs of milk, pretends that he isn’t listening to the clatter and scrape of cutlery, the soft thump of a foot kicking the table leg. Sounds that mean Sam hasn’t disappeared again. 

‘Disappeared’ will always be easier than ‘left’.

Dean doesn’t know why they’re still in Flagstaff. His father won’t tell him.

The motel has been replaced by a one-bedroom apartment with a sofa bed in what passes for the living room. A small, black and white television sits in the corner, pictures of places he’ll never go skipping no matter which way the aerial is twisted. It’s a home built from someone else’s furniture and faded, floral curtains that reek of cigarette smoke paid for in advance with fake names. 

For the first week John had refused to let Sam out of his sight, no longer trusting one son to keep the other safe. It should mean something that his father’s left them alone now, and it does. Just not enough. Anger has been papered over by a distance familiar to Dean from a lifetime spent watching his father deal with other people that way.

Now he’s one of the other people and relief at Sam’s return is pacing within a glass cage scratched with blame, wound tight and wary.

He slides a hand under the sleeve of his shirt and traces raised, puckered lines on the inside of his left forearm. Self-engraved tattoos trying to hold back the fear. The scabs are half-healed, not deep enough for a needle and thread but still bleeding if he moves suddenly. They would have closed if only he didn’t keep cutting them open again, always in the same place, exactly the same way. 

The piece of glass is hidden inside a sock at the bottom of his bag. 

It feels right when nothing else does.

Sam’s arm brushes his as a second bowl joins the first in the sink, this one empty. 

_Plink._

One one-thousand.

_Plink._

Two one-thousand.

_Plink._

Three one-thousand. 

“C’mon,” he says, giving Sam a push towards the living room. “Dad said we have to clean the guns before he gets back.”

“Dean…”

“You know the drill. Remove the bolt and brush it with solvent, scrub out the bore and then oil. Patches are in the kit. Make sure you get all the salt out. Start cleaning.”

“Why? ‘Cause Dad said we have to? Why do you always…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Sam. Sit down, shut up and clean.”

“Fine.”

They sit on sagging plaid cushions, work without speaking as minutes and seconds tick by. Shadows stretch across a coffee table covered with newspaper and rags, weapons disconnected from violence by hands that should be too young to hold them. 

When Sam breaks the silence it’s with a rush of words that run together. “I know you’re angry and stuff, okay? I know. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry but you shouldn’t be doing that. I don’t want you to do that.”

“Do what?” Dean says, looking up.

Sam’s hands are resting on a sawed-off shotgun, worrying at his lower lip with teeth that are still too large for his mouth. In another few years they’ll fit properly but for the moment he resembles nothing so much as a weedy rabbit with hair that’s more than a little out of control. A clump is sticking up on one side.

“Dude, what?” Dean demands impatiently. 

Eyes narrow as they flick down to Dean’s arm and back again.

“That,” says Sam.

Shock pins him against the chair, broken springs digging into his leg. 

Sam can’t know. 

Scars and cuts, bruises and blood are an ordinary part of their lives with too many causes to name. He didn’t think anyone would notice, hadn’t thought twice before pushing his sleeves up. No, no, no, no. Panicked explanations trip and fall through his mind. Each one is picked up and examined by fingers that won’t stop shaking only to be tossed aside for yet another. 

No one is supposed know. 

He’s been careful to make sure they don’t. 

“It’s nothing, just a souvenir from a ghoul Dad and I took care of while you off doing whatever it was you were doing. Nasty one. Now shut up and fucking clean,” Dean finally says, voice flat. 

As lies go it’s stupid.

He’s counting on Sam being unable to hold a conversation of more than three syllables with their father before the yelling starts.

Sam sighs, mouth pinched as he reaches for the gun oil. “Sure, whatever. Just stay away from ghouls for a while then, okay? Please?” 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “It’s fine, Sammy. Don’t go getting all hysterical on me. Everyone will start thinking you really are a teenage girl.”

He throws a stained rag in Sam’s direction and can’t help smiling when it lands on his brother’s head, perching there like a demented bonnet. Sam hesitates on the edge of a scowl before grinning back, bitch face abandoned in the knowledge that he’s been forgiven. 

The world tilts a degree closer to normal.

And Dean means to stop, really he does. He’ll mean it just as much the next time, too.

:::: :::: ::::

The door of the Impala closes with muffled thud as Dean climbs inside. He pulls a lumpy, unopened envelope out from under his jacket and tosses it onto the seat. Water drips from his hair, down the back of his neck.

He needs to be in Battle Creek, Nebraska by tonight. 

There are reports of a kindergarten teacher being found partially eaten and strung up in one of the classrooms. Her legs were missing. Personally, he thinks looking after kids makes dismemberment an occupational hazard, but whatever. His father wants them to check it out anyway. 

He remembers being stuck next to a kid called Tommy Schmidt in one school. For three whole weeks he’d watched on in horror as Tommy sucked down all the craft paste he could lay his pudgy hands on. Twisted little fucker.

He’ll be late if he doesn’t leave now.

It’s time to go. 

Cold fingers wrestle with the keys before the right one slides home and the ignition sparks. He could do this in his sleep and today shouldn’t be any different. Somehow it is. His eyes track the monotonous, yellow blur of headlights passing through the rain as he sits, breathes in the familiar scent of leather and taps out a restless beat on the wheel. 

He scrubs a hand over his mouth and shivers, waits for the heat to crank up.

It’s time to go. 

Instead of driving away he picks up the envelope, thumbnail teasing at a line of stamps impressed with black ink, peeling from the damp. The looped scrawl of his name is familiar from watching it fill notebooks with a succession of homework assignments. Shakespeare and biology, equations that may as well have been Japanese for all the sense they made to Dean. 

It would have been on the college application forms if he’d known Sam was filling them out. On the note left behind when the angry slam of doors and raised voices wound down into silence, if only there’d been one.

There wasn’t. 

All he got were bare, metal coat hangers twisting in a wardrobe and his father passed out in the bedroom, bottle of whisky cradled to his chest. 

It’s still the worst day of his life and he doesn’t want to open the envelope only to find this is the second. 

The letter was sent three months ago, or at least that’s what the postmark says. Bobby’s address has been scratched out and the details of a post office box in Fayetteville, Arkansas written in. There’s a smudge of engine grease on one side. He thinks it’s been a few weeks now since he and Bobby spoke.

Okay, so maybe more than a few but it’s not his fault.

He’s been busy. 

There’s always another creature to hunt and kill, strangers to save. It has nothing to do with hope or wanting to pretend, just for a little while longer, that whatever’s inside the envelope doesn’t echo his own scale of worth, falling somewhere between disappointing and bad. 

“Don’t let it be bad,” he murmurs. 

The anxiety that’s been his constant companion for days now is dragging ragged fingernails under his skin, filling his head with white noise. It’s too loud. He grips his left forearm and presses down hard, tries to lose himself in the memory of last night.

He’d sat on a motel bed holding a box cutter, back against the headboard.

The piece of glass was abandoned years ago. After a period of trial and error he’d settled on the box cutter. It’s practical and his, separate from hunting. The blade retracts and can be replaced when it’s blunt.

Arm resting against an upraised knee, he pressed stainless steel to his skin and cut four straight, diagonal lines. Over and over, until the edges gaped wide and blood fell in a steady drip onto an old towel. After the first biting sting everything faded away. 

Hopes and dreams, pain and fear.

That’s what happens.

He’s used to sewing himself back together again, has had a lifetime of practice, and last night was no different.

Now the aching pain of the stitches helps.

It’s too late to pretend that the envelope didn’t arrive or got lost in the mail. It always has been, right from the moment he first spoke to Bobby. He tears it open. Inside are two plain, black cassette tapes, each with a handwritten label stuck to the top. 

There’s no note. 

He inserts the tape marked “One” and presses play. 

His fingers aren’t shaking and he doesn’t want to cut the stitches in his arm out one by one with the end of a knife.

“Hey, Dean. It’s um, Sam. Guess that’s pretty obvious, huh?”

The voice sounds scratchy, distorted and _so fucking right_ , that he’s too scared to blink and wants to squeeze his eyes tightly shut, both at the same time. 

He settles for staring straight ahead and watching cold rain strike the windscreen.

“Don’t turn it off, okay? Just listen. So, um. God, I had this all planned out and now it sounds stupid. I don’t know what to say.” 

Neither does Dean, so they both sit and listen to the engine rumble. One of them’s chasing normal in a lecture theatre half a world away.

“Anyway, I know it’s been a while. It’s just, I was thinking you could call sometime, maybe, if you wanted to. Come visit, I don’t know. I’ve met this girl and she’s great, you’d love her. I kind of do, I think. Maybe. It’s complicated. School’s great, everything’s…but I miss you. Yeah, I know, I know.”

“Teenage girl,” say two voices at the same time. One’s shaded with laughter, the other tight and hoarse. He doesn’t know which is his.

“I’m not sorry I left, ‘cause I had to. You know that right? But it wasn’t - it was Dad and the hunting. It was never supposed to be...” 

There’s a frustrated huff and from the corner of his eye he can see Sam sitting in the passenger seat, forehead scrunched as an oversized hand claws at his hair.

It’s needs trimming.

“This. It wasn’t supposed to be this.”

“Yeah, well it is,” Dean says to the voice that’s his brother, arms braced and tense against the wheel. Stitches break open with a sharp pull against his skin, the sleeve of his shirt growing damp under the jacket.

He lets it bleed and feels the tight band around his chest loosen, just a little. 

“Um. Anyway, look after yourself. Please? I know we never got into it before I…before. But I’m not blind or stupid, Dean. Even if Dad’s too obsessed to notice, I know you still…It isn’t getting better on its own, man. It isn’t. At least try to be safe, okay? So, um, yeah. Guess that’s it. If you need anything, you know where I am.”

There’s a few seconds of static, the faint sound of a door and someone calling Sam’s name.

Then, “Bye Dean.”

It’s more than he got the last time and still not enough, even if he can’t stop the shamed curl of relief that Sam’s somewhere else. 

He’s fine. 

The cuts aren’t a problem, just something he does and no, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Not ever. 

He pulls out the tape and shoves it back into the envelope. Pauses for a few seconds, then exhales sharply and picks up the second one. Runs a finger over the white, sticky label marked ‘Two’ and inserts it, presses play.

“Don’t let it be bad.”

There’s no voice this time, just loud music flooding the inside of the Impala.

“That’s the best you’ve got, Sam? Seriously?” he snorts, a not-quite smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

He turns up the volume anyway and presses a foot to the accelerator.

It’s time to go.

He makes it to Battle Creek with an hour to spare, tape playing loud the whole way. Not that he’d ever admit it, but maybe Bon Jovi does rock on occasion. 

It turns out that the town has an infestation of Nagual that take a week to clear out. The lore says they usually prefer vegetable scraps to the legs of middle-aged women. Two hundred miles later he’s still not convinced that one of the kids wasn’t responsible. Some of them didn’t look quite right to him. 

He doesn’t mention the envelope to John.

He never calls Sam and buries the first tape at the bottom his duffle, the one his father never goes through. It’ll be another year before he crawls head first through a window in the middle of the night and hears his brother’s voice again. 

The second tape he listens to sometimes. Mostly when he’s driving along empty back roads as blood seeps between the rough cross-stitches decorating his skin. When he’s alone and wishes he wasn’t.

Six months later the tape breaks.

“Stupid piece of crap,” he grunts, black tangles of music spilling from the cassette player when he tries to pull it free. “I swear to god, if you’ve screwed up my baby…”

He tosses the mess onto the back seat and keeps driving.

That night he digs around under the dim lighting in a motel carpark and retrieves it. The second tape ends up in his bag, right at the bottom, beside the first.

It’s broken, but he keeps it anyway.

::: ::: ::::

The water is stained with rust, barely cold.

Dean leans over the basin and splashes another handful over his face, desperate to pretend that it helps. When he finally looks up the person staring back from the mirror is pale and strained. He watches damp eyelashes blink. Fear is seeping through the mask he’s struggled to maintain ever since they started the drive back to Lawrence.

The sound of running water fades as he twists off the tap. 

_“Then what are we supposed to do?”_

Sam’s words are a broken litany inside his head, sentences and meaning unraveled by unspoken panic that won’t wash away. He needs the noise to stop, just long enough to take a full breath.

“…these dreams,” - _what are we supposed to do_ \- ”and sometimes they come true.”

“Dean, I know where we have to…Back home,” - _what are we supposed to do_ \- ”back to Kansas.”

“The thing in the house, do you think,” - _what are we supposed to do_ \- “it’s the thing that killed Mom and…”

 _What are we supposed to do_ \- “…much do you actually remember?”

“Does this feel like,” - _what are we supposed to do_ \- “just another job to you?”

_What am I supposed to do?_

There’s something inside their old house. His father’s missing, won’t answer the phone and Sam’s angry eyes demand answers he doesn’t have. Now he’s locked inside a gas station bathroom, trying to work out what to do.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Talking to people who might remember their parents from twenty years ago isn’t going help, and he knows it. So does Sam. Their conversation outside was as much about Dean comforting himself as his brother. He’s playing a game of make-believe, jumping smoke and mirror pieces from one square to the next because it’s the only thing he can think of.

That’s it’s about home makes it worse.

He’d been prepared for the ache of familiarity; the pain of walking through a door to find another family living inside what, through everything, he’s continued to think of as home. And the pain was there, just not in the way he expected. He barley recognised the house they once lived in, couldn’t find it amongst remodeled walls and painted boards, damp leaves rotting on a brick path.

It’s one thing to swear that he’d never go back. Entirely another to find there’s nowhere to avoid and no home to return to. Only someone else’s old house with bad wiring, invisible rats in the walls and the monster that may have killed his mother camped out in a closet.

Maybe it has a thing for playing dress-ups. 

The whole situation suddenly strikes him as funny. He starts laughing because seriously, fucking ghost rats and flammable, cross-dressing monsters? 

“Spontaneously combusting fetish rodents who think electrical wiring’s the new pie,” he chokes out, “Maybe they’re from Battle Creek.”

Convulsive gasps leave him bent almost double, hands gripping the sides of his jacket. Tears force themselves from the corners of his eyes. He can hear himself but can’t stop. _Oh God._ Only five minutes ago he’d been explaining to Sam why they needed to chill and take this slow, treat it just like any other job.

The laughter stops as quickly as it started, trailing off into a strangled sob and shallow, panting breaths. It’s not really funny at all. He grabs one of the coarse, paper towels sitting on a ledge near the basin and scrubs it over his face. Tries to slow down his heart rate, the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

“You’re fine,” Dean whispers to himself, pressing the towel against closed eyelids before tossing it onto the floor. “You can do this. You’ll be fine.”

Once the noise in his head stops he’ll be able to think.

It should be at least another five minutes before Sam gets sick of waiting. Not ideal, but long enough. The box cutter’s in the Impala but he keeps a silver knife strapped to one ankle. It’s clean and sharp.

He leans down and pulls it free. 

The small blade gleams dully under forty-watt light, looking more like a child’s toy than what it is: a weapon designed to kill, cut and make bleed. He places it against the edge of the basin with a soft _clink_ and pushes up the left sleeve of his jacket and shirt. Anticipation laced with need is dancing under his skin.

The inside of his forearm is covered with scars.

Faded white lines overlaid with half-healed cuts, puckered skin knitted together and torn apart too many times to count.

This is what he does. 

Sam’s hasn’t mentioned anything, too wrapped up in nightmares and grief to notice if Dean takes longer in the bathroom than he used to. He figures so much has changed that Sam’s inattention is just another thing to add to the list. He’s been careful to wear long sleeved shirts anyway. The last thing he needs is a lecture about emotional health or whatever fancy psychobabble his brother picked up at Stanford.

He stretches out his arm, elbow locked with the flat of his hand braced against pale green porcelain, and drags the knife across his skin with a slow, deliberate stroke. It doesn’t hurt. For a moment nothing happens, the cut remaining white and waxen. When beads of red start to form he releases a shaky breath and traces the same line again, before starting another.

Everything disappears.

The place he goes to is quiet, filled with an emptiness that lets him feel nothing at all. The adrenaline-fueled high of a hunt doesn’t come close. And if panic and fear still flutter around the edges of his mind then it’s easy enough to pretend they belong to someone else.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he becomes aware of a fist banging against the door.

“Dean! C’mon, we need to leave. Every second Jenny and her kids spend in that house they’re in danger.”

The voice sounds fuzzy and distant. 

He turns his head only find the room sliding sideways, black spots dancing before his eyes. His knees start to buckle, knife falling with a loud clatter as he grabs for the edge of the edge of the counter and misses. 

He blinks, unaware of having been asleep, to find himself slumped on the cold floor.

Oh Christ.

There’s a throbbing pain in his arm, sharp and relentless. The sleeve of his jacket’s wet; blood dripping from the ends of his fingers. When he pushes it aside he has to bite back a moan. At least one of the wounds needs packing, the holes in his arm beyond stitching even if a suture kit was available. 

He clamps shaking fingers over his skin and watches fresh blood well between them, bright and red. It means that he’s probably nicked a vein.

“Hey, you okay man?” The handle of the door rattles, before the knocking starts again. “Dean?”

There’s nowhere to go.

He needs help and doesn’t know what to do.

:::: :::: ::::

The end will begin with a door slamming open.

Just like that.

He’ll remain frozen in place as a voice twisted with fear calls his name, watching blood paint the floor with drips of abstract despair, hypnotised by their fall. The door will shake under the force of someone kicking it hard. Still he’ll hesitate, lost between the impossibility of running away and wanting to being found. 

Someone take my hand and lead me back. 

Please.

His chest will ache with sobs that have nowhere to go. Red-stained fingers will loosen their grip, straining to reach a lock that’s nearly out of reach. 

He’ll whisper the word, “Sammy.”

Then he’ll flick the latch.

Just like that.

Sunlight will push past a backlit silhouette.

Sam will stand in the doorway, raised gun gripped tightly in one hand; prepared to kill a monster only to find that the room holds no one but Dean. If only it were that simple. 

Confusion overlaid with the sickening smell of petrol and industrial antiseptic will fill the space between them. He’ll taste it in the back of his throat and swallow hard, try to breathe through his mouth. Sam’s just a kid whose girlfriend died. His life should be something more than standing in a filthy restroom watching his brother bleed.

He’ll feel broken and ashamed. Neither of them will move.

“Oh fuck, Dean. What the fuck have you done…”

He’ll squeeze his eyes shut at Sam’s voice, desperate to avoid a face distorted by accusation and blame. Wait for the sound of footsteps, the slam of the door to leave him trapped and alone. It’s what he’s learnt to expect. Neither of them will notice Déjà vu rocking backwards and forwards in the corner, giggling, shining eyes insane with glee. 

When he hears the door clicking shut his heart will stumble, drop to damaged knees. He can’t do this any more.

God. 

Someone make it stop.

He’ll flinch at the squeak of rubber-soled sneakers before realising that the footsteps are walking towards, not away. Blink open wet eyes to find Sam crouched before him in a t-shirt that needs ironing, bundled up jacket held between his hands. The fabric will be soft, still warm when it’s pressed against the ruin of his skin. 

“Hey man, you’re okay. It’ll be okay. We’re gonna get you stitched up and deal with this. You’re my big brother. Not letting go. You and me, right?” 

The pressure on his arm will increase as their eyes meet, one set green and the other brown, both rimmed with red. 

“Dean, listen. You and me.”

This time it won’t be a question.

The cracks that make up his life will retreat half a step and he’ll echo the words, one side of his mouth lifting into a faint smile despite the pain.

“You and me.” 

For the first time in forever he’ll feel that it’s true, that this could be home. 

Just like that.

Déjà vu will start screaming, orange flames licking its skin from the inside. When Sam pulls Dean to his feet they won’t see the smoldering pile of ash left behind in the corner.

It’s not a magic solution. 

Nothing’s perfect.

Some nights, when the noise in Dean’s head grows too loud, he’ll still find himself in one bathroom or another, red flowers blooming amongst scar tissue as Sam tosses restlessly in his sleep. They’ll argue and fight. People will be lost no matter how hard he tries to hold them in place. Each time he’ll want to draw lines on his skin until the world falls away.

It will still feel better than it should, perhaps it always will. 

But he’ll stop locking the door.

In a few months Sam will leave him on the side of the road with only bitter words for company. 

California. 

Anger will drive him through the night, empty roads disappearing beneath worn tires. Come dawn he’ll be parked on the outskirts of a town whose name has been lost, population one hundred and three, running the tip of his thumb gently over a knife. He’ll watch a single drop of blood form and trace the length of his hand, curl around his wrist and hold him close. 

Then he’ll stop, even though he wants to keep going, and put the knife away. The next day he’ll pick up the phone and call his brother. Despite everything, he’ll know that he’s loved.

Always like that.


End file.
